how to sort mixed numeric/alphanumeric array in javascript

Question

I have a mixed array that I need to sort by number, alphabet and then by digit-

[\'A1\', \'A10\', \'A11\', \'A12\', \'A3A\', \'A3B\', \'A3\', \'A4\', \'B10\', \'         


        

Answer 1

var arr = ['A1', 'A10', 'A11', 'A12', 'A3A', 'A3B', 'A3', 'A4', 'B10', 'B2', 'F1', '1', '2', 'F3'];

// regular expression to get the alphabetic and the number parts, if any
var regex = /^([a-z]*)(\d*)/i;

function sortFn(a, b) {
  var _a = a.match(regex);
  var _b = b.match(regex);

  // if the alphabetic part of a is less than that of b => -1
  if (_a[1] < _b[1]) return -1;
  // if the alphabetic part of a is greater than that of b => 1
  if (_a[1] > _b[1]) return 1;

  // if the alphabetic parts are equal, check the number parts
  var _n = parseInt(_a[2]) - parseInt(_b[2]);
  if(_n == 0) // if the number parts are equal start a recursive test on the rest
      return sortFn(a.substr(_a[0].length), b.substr(_b[0].length));
  // else, just sort using the numbers parts
  return _n;
}

console.log(arr.sort(sortFn));

Note: the i modifier in the regular expression (/.../i) means case-insensitive (looks for both lowercases and uppercases).